ATAG

The Americas Technical Advisory Group (ATAG) was established in 1994.  Its purpose is to advise ICCBBA on the needs of users in the Americas. 

The ATAG membership is drawn from experts and representatives in the field of transfusion medicine working in the Americas in facilities that are licensed with ICCBBA.

In addition to voting members, liaisons attend ATAG meetings.  Liaisons are from regulatory authorities and organizations with an interest in the ISBT 128 standard.

Vendors and others interested in the work of the group may attend meetings as observers at the discretion of the chairman.

ATAG is very active in submitting proposals for changes to the ISBT 128 Standard.  Most recently members of the group have submitted proposals dealing with the encoding of red cell antigens to include the number of times the antigen has been determined, encoding the actual volume of a product, and allowing flexibility in the X dimension of bar code concatenation pairs.

The group has been working to encourage the use of the Manufacturers Data File.

Canadian members of the group are working to complete a Consensus document for Canada.

Representatives and Technical Experts

• Suzy Grabowski, Chair
• Karen Burns
• Suzanne Butch
• Nikki Denlinger
• Peggy Dunn
• Simon Fournier
• Guilherme Genovez
• Donald Gironne
• David Lincoln
• Sharon McMillan
• Lora Poore
• Dan Simpson
• Dorothy Ward

Liaisons

• Francisca Agbanyo [Health Canada]
• Jennifer Jones [US FDA]